


Sepia and Blood

by Anonymous



Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, Murder, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 06:48:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15791178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Mateo has not changed in almost 40 years.In his own way, neither has Izan.





	Sepia and Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiriamKenneath](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiriamKenneath/gifts).



It was not the first time Izan had seen men from his old homeland at this bar, but it was the first time he had seen Mateo in over forty years.

Even so, he did not for a moment doubt himself. Mateo's face was curiously unchanged: unlined, unscarred, unsoftened. There was something in the tint of his skin that seemed different to Izan, although he could not quite describe it to himself. It could have been only the effect of the bar's lighting, which somehow managed to be both garish and dim. It could have been nothing at all, just Izan's attempts to convince himself that Mateo - this Mateo who sat on a bar stool with a lazy, assured pose that suggested an invisible wall held him up - had not been lifted entirely from his memories. Or created from them.

He was staring, of course, but that was a habit he had never attempted to cure himself of. Mateo was beautiful.

Mateo's companion noticed. He had been leaning a little away, diffident, but his eyes caught Izan's, and he murmured something, and Mateo looked up and then back at his companion with a mean little smile. _I've caught your fish for you_ , Izan thought wryly, seeing Mateo's companion now saw Mateo through Izan's eyes.

And what did Mateo see? An older man, but Izan thought his own face still interesting enough to be worth a second look. He had grown into his hooked nose and his deep-set eyes. And of course, Mateo did not recognize him.

Suddenly impatient, as though forty years of wondering had also been forty years of longing, Izan stood and crossed to the table. Both of them looked up. "Mateo," Izan said, with a courteous nod, as though Mateo was a man he knew well and saw several times a week. The age of his claim on Mateo was at least not possible to exaggerate.

And then Mateo did recognize him. The smile widened, became meaner. "Izan," he said, purring, and when his companion shifted in his chair, he somehow turned the purr on him without speaking a further word, only carrying it to him on a sigh. The other man subsided, tension draining out of him... and Izan thought he knew how this would go. He rather thought he didn't want to learn this man's name.

During some of the times he'd indulged himself in wondering, through travel, kindness, betrayal, sickness, health, achievements petty and less petty, he'd had a speech prepared for this moment. Time had worn it away. He found he preferred to let Mateo unfold himself in front of him.

*

They left the bar all together. Mateo's companion, handsy with both of them now, found nothing strange in this, and when Izan shrugged, Mateo did not press his persuasion on both of them.

Mateo was staying in a little room above an all-night store. It seemed curiously exposed to Izan, and it also bothered him that he was so close. Surely he should have encountered Mateo again beforehand. But the room was clearly newly acquired, barely enough possessions scattered to make a mess. A room with a shower, a room with a bed, a room with a chair.

Izan took the chair. Mateo took his companion through to the bed.

Izan wondered if Mateo was testing him - for complacence, for envy? He had known enough to recognize Mateo without a flicker of surprise at his youth. He knew not to envy the man in Mateo's bed, no matter what it looked or sounded like. The hot gasps he heard through the thin walls, the door ajar, were similar enough to gasps of ordinary pleasure, he supposed, the way some people's laughter sounded like crying - but even mentally substituting that idea, he did not find them arousing. Simply messy.

They stopped; Izan heard the springs on the bed creak, bodies shifting. One body shifting another body: Mateo dragged their erstwhile companion out of the room by his arm. On the skin below Mateo's grip, Izan saw that the body's wrist had an angry blotch, raised like a rash.

"God," Mateo said, sounding annoyed and almost petulant. "I really can't shock you."

"One of the benefits of aging, my dear," Izan retorted. A benefit, thus, that Mateo had not enjoyed in a very long time. "You might fuck me instead."

"You're not scared?" Mateo sounded even younger, then. He glanced down at the dead man. "You're excited."

"No," Izan said. "Not by that. But it's been a long time."

Mateo stared at him a long time.

"How did you know to find me?"

"I didn't," Izan said. "But I sometimes thought that if I was right about what happened, when you disappeared, sooner or later you'd wish to be reminded of home. And of course you could never go home."

Mateo laughed. "Is the world so simple to you?"

"Does it matter? I'm not so surprised to have seen you again. But it's not coincidence, and it's certainly not planning. It's inevitability."

The old rehearsed speeches were rising to his mouth now; he had been wrong to assume himself rid of them. He tried to replace them with boldness, crudity.

"You should fuck me," he said, "and then you should keep me. It's you who should have been looking for me, Mateo. There's no one else who knew you before your turning, whom you can afford to get close to now. I want you back, and the price doesn't matter."

"And what if I decide I don't like that kind of devotion?" Mateo challenged him.

"Then you feast on me, I suppose," Izan said. "I've had a long time to consider the possibilities. Perhaps you were right, after all, to ensure I had such a long time." There. Flattery would turn Mateo's head; it always had.

"Hm," Mateo said, the edged smile returning.

"Come home to me," Izan said, and although Mateo's mouth twisted in disdain at the sentiment, he stepped into Izan's arms.


End file.
